So Long, Old Friend

December 16, 2011
Written by Sebastian Moss

I will never forget the first time I met you, it was raining, a soft mist was slowly thinning as London woke up to a new day – Friday, March 23rd, 2007. After months of hearing my US friends talking about the “amazing PS3” the day was finally here and, after paying a whopping £425 (about $833 back then), you were in my hands.

Sure there weren’t that many games to play on you when I first plugged you in to my ‘cutting edge’ HDTV, and sure, the PSN wasn’t exactly going toe-to-toe with Xbox Live, but I still loved you. Both launch titles in Europe, Resistance and Motorstorm ate up hours upon hours, with my later purchase of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion guaranteeing an early onset of arthritis. With releases like Warhawk, Uncharted, Killzone and GTA, I grew closer and closer to you. We’ve had our arguments, like when I questioned why you spent so long installing games, what the point was of Home, or why you kept forcing me to download updates that didn’t do anything, but don’t let that detract from what we shared together. Each year you delighted me more and more, treating me to something new, sharing a completely different gaming experience with me on a monthly basis. I watched you render hundreds of different worlds, millions of different situations and billions of frames, all for me.

But I didn’t listen to the warning signs, the chugging as you tried to load up Batman, or the crash playing Uncharted. I didn’t want to believe something was wrong, you’ve stood by me through thick and thin, new jobs, a new home, a burglary – you were always there. I should have done something, and not tried to have one more 24 hour race on Gran Turismo 5, not have tried to hunt down one more dragon in Skyrim. Now you’re gone, and I wish we could go on one last quest together.